Twitter / jveiga

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

The media industry fascinates me more each day.

The changes taking pace are accelerating (or maybe it's because I'm now entrenched in it working for Lingospot). Every time I go to the "old media" companies like Gannett, Time, Forbes, etc I see changes. Mostly I see that the human side is shifting, people are being shuffled around and new ones being brought in. I think the door is now wide open for a lot of new things to happen. Exciting things line new revenue models, new content distribution models, and new types of leaders. Even in content the shift is dramatic. My hunch is that blogging, twitter, facebook (the social) were just the beginning. The truth is that the door to the adjacent possible is now open. New companies will be able to build on top of what has been solidifying in the past 10 years. Come to think about it, 10 years ago YouTube would have been impossible because on-line video was...Real Media streaming :). Now anyone can post content anywhere and distribute it. Why don't they? Because big media still has the brand and in some way the eyeballs. Which brings me to the question, will big/old media keep it's lead or will it be toppled by some outlier?

There is certainly a LOT of opportunity out there. One thing is for sure the media business / pie is only bound to grow. Distribution is bound to change. And monetization is definitely going to shift - the CPM based business model is going to not apply anymore when it comes to content. If CPM is the way, then the crazed up person out there that creates the most viral video will win with the most hits :). Ok, I'm exaggerating, but something tells me that the content optimization will emerge from ad optimization and people will pay for what they consume the same way the went from pirated music (or CD's for those who paid...) and now hit the "buy now" iTunes button every other second to get the 99 cent song they just retrieved using SoundHound... i've done the same with movies and recently (with my iPad) with many other video sources. The NYT is certainly trying it's luck with paywalls... we will see. A guess, there will be paid high quality content, and there will be free cheap (Demand Media anyone?) traffic driven content. I'm betting the high-quality paid content is where the battle is going to be raging for the foreseeable future and where opportunity abounds...